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Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Tuna is locally known as ikan tongkol, ikan aya or ikan kayu, depending on which state you are in.
It’s a budget friendly fish and my fish being at almost 1kg before cleaning is sold at RM8/kg.

Gulai ikan tongkol is usually eaten with nasi dagang, or the other way round, whichever way, LOL.
It is different from Kelantan’s version. From what I remember, Kelantan’s version is more yellowish, tasting slightly more “curry like” maybe due to its turmeric content. Whereas Terengganu’s version is more “assam”, as in sour.

Whenever I travel to Kuala Terengganu, I will try my best to have my Nasi Dagang fix at Kak Pah’s located at Pantai Batu Burok. It was where I had my first Nasi Dagang. 7 of us having breakfast with 21 plates on the table. Each person were given 1 plate of rice, 1 plate of fish, 1 plate of pickled vegetables, so, you can do the maths. Whole table filled with plates! It was a funny sight asking around, is this mine, is this yours… LOL. Kak Pah’s rice has this boing boing texture that I find hard to forget. It taste like eating Bario rice. And her gulai ikan tongkol is very nice, spicy and sourish.. perfect pairing with the tacky rice. The sourness raises the appetite and decreases the cloying effect of coconut milk infused sticky rice. I loved it sooo much that I drank all the gravy. When I came back from my trip, I happened to see a Nasi Dagang Terengganu recipe featured in the Star. I quickly cut it out and kept it, but it’s at my mom’s house. I didn’t go home to get it for this blog post.

On my 5th trip to Terengganu, I introduced this dish to my then boyfriend (now husband). Maybe he was tired from the whole East Coast trip and sleeping on foreign beds, so he didn’t think too much of the rice. But when I cooked it this time, only did he really taste the gulai, the rice and gave me good feedback. And my MIL said, “We could’ve made this for Reuben’s birthday the other day. It’s special and nice.”
I don’t want to comment too much on my take on this, but I can say, I can be proud of myself.

All ready for Step #5 onwards

It's a usual practise to buy the ready mixed spice for gulai ikan tongkol, but since it's only easily available in Terengganu, it'll be hard for others to replicate it at home. And I found this recipe suppposedly from a royal cook for the Terengganu Sultanate that uses a ratio of 2:1 of coriander seeds to fennel seeds, so I made my own spice mix with this given ratio.

My gulai also looked very red due to the chilli oil all floating to the top. My dried chillies are rather red and spicy. I like to purchase from once certain shop only because dried chillies bought at other places aren't as intense, colour and flavour wise. It's my fault that my coconut milk released too much oil, but the colour is indeed attractive :)

2. Boil the water with asam gelugor and put in fish. Let it simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat.
3. Lightly toast coriander seed and fennel seed in wok and then mill them finely.
4. Mill chilli, shallots, garlic, galangal and ginger together into a paste.

Now i realised Tongkol is actually Tuna fish, I had mistaken it for Tenggiri (because i thought they look quite similar )and bought home to make fish paste last week, was wondering why the fish paste is not bouncy at all. Now i know.....

To get a more authentic taste to the gulai, you could further add: 1) about 1 tbsp of kerisik 2) 1/2 small pkt of rempah masak (Bunga ros) - usually I get it in KTrg. Not sure if you can get it in other towns. 3) 3-4 Large green chilli (not chilli padi)- this will immediately bring out the "smell" and taste of kuah nasi dagang once the chilli soften.

I tried this recipe plus the nasi dagang last weekend. It was a success!! The curry tastes wonderful with the nasi. The nasi is really a special kind. I'm from Pahang, so I have eaten nasi dagang many times. Have always love it. Now, I know I can cook it too. Thank you so much for the recipes.

PS. For nasi dagang, I skipped step 4 & 5 and it worked real fine. I even cooked it again the next day to confirm the process and it tasted just like the original Terengganu nasi dagang.